Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community (PDF) - CIA

RECOMMENDATIONS
Without evaluating preintervention, or precourse, performance and following
that with a postintervention evaluation, it is difficult to determine the effect that
any training intervention will have on employee performance. In addition to
formal measurements based on course objectives, it is important to collect performance
data from managers and supervisors to evaluate the retention of training
and the impact that training has had on actual day-to-day performance.
Developing performance metrics will inform and advance the training interventions
currently employed in the Intelligence Community and will determine
the gap between ideal performance and actual performance. As such,
the system is an iterative process of setting performance standards, measuring
actual performance, designing training interventions to improve performance,
and evaluating the effects of those interventions on actual performance. The
data derived from these interventions and measurements will then contribute
to the growth of the knowledge repository and strengthen the ties created
through the communities of practice.
Organizational Culture and Effectiveness. Identifying existing organizational
norms and taboos is the first step to creating an internal dialogue about
the future of an organization and its place in a competitive environment. Culture
drives the operations of an organization, determines the people who are
hired, enculturates new employees, establishes standards of behavior and systems
of rewards, shapes an organization’s products, and determines the social
capital that any organization may possess. In short, culture defines an organization’s
identity to itself and to others.
Understanding the culture of the Intelligence Community and analyzing the
effects of any performance intervention on that culture contributes to the evaluation
of intervention effectiveness. Effective performance interventions will
have a positive effect on the organization’s culture and become themselves
measurement instruments.
Developing cultural markers to track organizational change and performance
improvement requires baseline ethnographic data and the identification
of key cultural indicators. Once identified, cultural indicators such as language
use, norms, and taboos would be measured at regular intervals and
would serve as grounded data to determine levels of change within the organization.
This would permit interventions to be modified before they became
ritualized within the Intelligence Community.
The Importance of Access
The improvement of human performance often requires an organization to
change its culture, and organizational leaders seldom possess sufficient power
to mandate cultural change by edict. At best, management can introduce
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